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every consumer dollar. Medical care costs have risen 41%, p<?rson' al care, 27%; recreation, 16%, and “other items”, 26%.
Pronounced inflation has been characteristic, until now, of wartime rather than peacetime. Until World War II, prices had declined in the United States after each maior war. Between • 1945 and 1951, however, wholesale prices rose 67%, rocked along fairly even for three years, antjjthen resumed the Upward move, to register a 7.3% advance since 1955. ^ If prices come down subsequentially without a full-blown depression, history again will h|ve‘been flouted. In this century, there have been steep price declines only in 1920-21 and in 1929-32. The statisticians, who compare the present recession with similar economic setbacks in. 1937-38, 1948-49 and 1953-54, recall that these three periods produced only slight dips in prices, after which the upward curve was resumed.
Let us turn to wages in industry. Since 1948, average hourly earnings in all manufacturing have risen 55%. The wage advances have included: food, 66%; textiles '29%; apparel, 26%; steel, 75%; automobiles, 54%.
This would indicate that there might be no need to W097 about a 20% rise in the cost of living, when wages have risen more sharply. There ire. catches in these figures, however, because they represent changes in average hourly earnings in only one segment of national income producing activi
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